From 'war rooms' to 'cancer battles', history shows military metaphors harm the NHS ✒️ agnesjuliet for ipaperviews
Doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, hospital porters, administrator, and cleaners did not sign up for battle out their “resilience plans” for how the NHS will cope with the upcoming
These plans reveals profound problems in the NHS – capacity, staffing and funding to name a few – but what is also worrying is the language used to describe them. The “war on cancer” was officially declared by US president Richard Nixon in 1971. Back home, and as the century progressed, the NHS itself became a new site of “trench warfare.” Doctors and nurses started referring to their jobs in terms of military service and their hospital accommodation as “barracks.
In addition, military metaphors used when discussing health policy and health services frame the NHS as a conflict between staff and a supposed deluge of patients. Identifying the issue as one of increased “demand” suggests that patients seeking medical services at times of need are the problem, rather than the very reason the NHS was set up in the first place.